A digital-to-analog (D/A) converter is a circuit on the borderline between the digital domain and the analog domain which acts as an intermediary in the exchange of information between the two domains. As the name indicates, a D/A-converter converts or transforms digital input signals to analog output signals, and is normally used for converting digital information in the form of combinations of two-level digits or bits into quantized analog information. D/A-converters are found in numerous applications of all modern technologies. They are widely used in different fields of electronics and communication.
The performance evaluation of a D/A-converter with regard to accuracy and distortion is normally based on the magnitude of the error generated in the D/A-conversion.
In general, all D/A-converters suffer from e.g. offset errors due to imperfections in the circuit realizations of the converters. These offset errors severely influence the behavior and performance of conventional D/A-converters.
In particular, in conventional cyclic D/A-converters and pipeline D/A-converters using regular binary code, the offset errors propagate and accumulate in a strictly increasing manner during a conversion, thus limiting the accuracy of the converter and increasing the distortion. In addition, relatively large differential and integral non-linearities are introduced.